Dick Van Patten, TV star best known for ‘Eight is Enough,’ dead at 86

Dick Van Patten, best known as patriarch Tom Bradford on the 1970s family drama “Eight is Enough,” died at age 86.

Dick Van Patten, a happy nice guy who became famous for playing a happy nice guy on "Eight Is Enough," died Tuesday morning at the age of 86.

He had been in St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, Calif., suffering from complications of diabetes. He had suffered several strokes in recent years.

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The Queens-born Van Patten, who started his acting career on Broadway at the age of 7, was best known as the tolerant, understanding patriarch Tom Bradford on "Eight Is Enough," the ABC sitcom that ran from 1977 to 1981.

From 1978 to 1984 he also played three different characters – Charlie Dillinger, John Whitcomb and George Hayes – on "The Love Boat."

With a round face and a warm smile, Van Patten became well-known for dozens of nice-guy roles during a long career that took him from "Naked City" and "Rawhide" to "The Doris Day Show," "7th Heaven," "Happy Days" and "Family Guy."

His longest role was one of his first, playing the son Nels Hansen in the seminal TV show "Mama" from 1949 to 1957.

That was one of his favorite roles, he said, and he named his firstborn son after the character.

He also said that role was his ticket to "Eight Is Enough." He was originally rejected for the part, he recalled years later, but ABC Entertainment President Fred Silverstein called him back because "he remembered watching me grow up on 'Mama.' "

Van Patten was comfortable with his friendly-fellow image, he wrote in his autobiography "Eighty Is Not Enough," but he didn't mind spoofing it.

He took roles in three movies produced by his good friend Mel Brooks, "High Anxiety," "Spaceballs" and "Robin Hood: Men In Tights."

He met his wife Patricia Poole when she was a June Taylor Dancer rehearsing for "The Jackie Gleason Show" and he was on the set of "Mama."

They were married in 1954, had three sons and moved to California in 1970 when he shifted from stage acting to the movies and television.

"Broadway was great," he later said. "But I didn't need it any more."

Like many character actors, he sometimes had to scramble for roles before "Eight Is Enough" came along.

But he loved life in California, where he could play golf and tennis year-round. He eventually installed his own tennis court and of the couple's three sons, two became tennis pros.

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When he became successful as an actor, he also plunged into his other lifetime passion, animal welfare.

As a child he had pets that included goats and an alligator named Oscar, which he briefly kept in the bathtub before donating it to the Central Park Zoo.

He later became active with guide dog organizations, founding National Guide Dog Month in 2008 and launching his own line of Natural Balance Pet Foods in 1989.

It started with dog food and expanded to include foods for other pets – including snake food that simulated the smell and feel of live mice.

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His next-door neighbor Michael Jackson fed only Natural Balance to the animals at his Neverland Ranch.

Born in Kew Gardens, Van Patten started out as too-cute child model, and during the Depression years his parents parlayed his All-American demeanor into theatrical roles. He had done a dozen Broadway plays by the time he was a teenager and would eventually appear in 27.

He also was heard in numerous radio roles.

"I had the greatest childhood in the world," he told writer Peer Oppenheimer in 1979. "I traveled all over, met the most fascinating people in the world and had fun backstage."

He performed with the likes of Melvyn Douglas, Tallulah Bankhead, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne and for a time was roommates with Burt Lancaster. He had a framed letter from Stan Laurel, written when Van Patten was 6, predicting he would become a star.

Van Patten admitted he wasn't always as perfect as his acting characters. He inherited a passion for gambling from his grandfather, who was a bookie, and said he was expelled from school at 14 for writing a composition on "How to Beat the Races."

He later owned racehorses, though he said he confined most of his gambling to poker. He was the TV commentator for the World Series of Poker from 1993 to 1995 and several times hosted Celebrity Poker Tournaments for charity.

He returned to the horse racing world on screen in HBO's short-lived series "Luck." In one of the few roles that went against his image, he played a shady hustler named Slick Dick.

He acted occasionally in later years, making a final TV appearance in 2011 as a guest on "Hot In Cleveland."